Three large semiconductor companies announced earnings beats after the market closed Wednesday, a welcome respite from the barrage of poor forecasts and plunging stock prices for chip companies in the last round of quarterly results.
Texas Instruments
(ticker: TXN), which was the canary in the coal mine for last quarter’s miserable earnings season, beat on earnings, as did
Lam Research
(LRCX) after installing a new CEO, and
Xilinx
(XLNX). Xilinx stock rose more than 8% in after-hours trading, Lam’s gains topped 4%, and Texas Instruments’ stock was up 1.5%.

Those earnings beats helped other chip companies in late trading, especially Lam’s major competitors in supplying the equipment used to make semiconductors,
Applied Materials
(AMAT) and
KLA-Tencor
(KLAC), which were both up more than 3% in after-hours action. Chip makers
Nvidia
(NVDA),
Analog Devices
(ADI) and
Maxim Integrated Products
(MXIM) were up more than 1% in late trading. Earlier Wednesday,
ASML Holding
(ASML) topped revenue and earnings estimates and closed with a 1.6% gain, though Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini said that the earnings beat was driven by a change in the company’s tax rate.

In other earnings action Wednesday afternoon:

•
Ford Motor
(F) revealed a loss to end the year — not a huge surprise after an earlier pre-announcement — and did not disclose its forecast for 2019.

Synchrony Financial
(SYF) posted stronger-than-expected financial results Wednesday morning, and announced several updates about its relationship with
Walmart
(WMT), which Jefferies analyst John Hecht said “represents the lifts of major overhangs in the stock.” For one, Synchrony extended its credit-card deal with Walmart’s Sam’s Club and said that Walmart was dismissing a lawsuit accusing the card company of being too risky with its underwriting. Synchrony also confirmed that it was selling its Walmart loan portfolio to
Capital One Financial
(COF) (which announced earnings Tuesday).

Synchrony shares rose 10.7% Wednesday, the best single-day gain in the company’s history.

• Two
Dow Jones Industrial Average
components saw their shares zoom higher after earnings Wednesday.
United Technologies
(UTX) easily beat earnings and revenue expectations, and Chief Executive Greg Hayes expects the company’s segment profit to grow faster than sales for the year ahead, as the company prepares to split itself into three businesses.
Procter & Gamble
(PG) also reported better-than-expected results in its fiscal second-quarter report, though Stifel analyst Mark Astrachan will be looking for more information about why the company didn’t lift its full-year earnings forecast despite beating estimates in the first half of the fiscal year.

• Shares of
Abbott Laboratories
(ABT) fell 2.2% Wednesday after the company reported a revenue miss.

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•
Kimberly-Clark
(KMB) announced a new strategic plan ahead of its 150-year anniversary in 2022, but investors focused on the company’s earnings and revenue misses.

•
Comcast
(CMCSA) said it lost 29,000 net video customers in the fourth quarter, though the telecommunications stock jumped 5.5% Wednesday after the company posted revenue and earnings beats. MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett pointed out that even though the number of video subscribers is falling, Comcast exceeded expectations on the metric, and investors seem to have shifted their focus to the company’s broadband business.

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